I have watched a few videos of track events (never got the chance to do one myself but want to in the near future).

But if you are not (or dont have to) counter steer, does that mean your not pushing the car hard enough?

 

No.

 

Mostly countersteering is to catch a slide. If you are countersteering, it's because you made a mistake that you are correcting, or at least trying to correct.

An S2000 is a pretty easy car to correct the rear wheels sliding out by countersteering. I learned this technique in a Miata, which is even easier to correct.

 

Ok. I just seen a lot of videos, especially some professionals from japan, that are always countersteering. automatically that made me think its b/c they are pushing the car to the limits.

 

I suppose when you are driving the car on the ragged edge you are always about to slide, so countersteering is necessary. That's another way of saying that the answer to your question could actually be YES.

 

Driving styles are like . . . well lets just say everybody has one

I have seen a lot more Japanese drivers employ that driving style, I don't know if that is an outgrowth of the touge racing there or what.

Technical drivers do not drive that way. The basic reason is that you should be utilizing your tires (and momentum) to move forward as fast as possible, not diagonally or sideways.

That being said, I have been instructed to drift around tight corners before by professional drivers. Usually when I was instructed to, it invovled (1) a very tight hairpin corner, (2) a relatively low powered car, and (3) very sticky slicks. The idea being that the car wouldn't overpower the tires and you would just kind of drift the corner, but the tires would catch in time and you could effectively retain more momentum -- don't have to slow down then wait for the low-powered car/kart/whatever to speed back up.

Cliffs:
-- From a pure technical standpoint, NO
-- There are always exceptions

 

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: it depends.

[QUOTE=zbrewha863,Jul 20 2010, 06:20 PM]Technical drivers do not drive that way.

 

You are, more or less, letting the front of the car move proportionate to the rear of the car that has lost traction to keep the car from rotating and beginning to yaw. It is very similar to reducing steering angle input as slip angle begins to reduce overall tractive capacity. If you continue to increase steering input, slip angle increases and traction decreases. In this instance, all wheels are increasing slip angle as they are all being oriented in a direction that does not coincide with the trajectory of the CoG.

Very, very slight amounts of countersteer indicate that the rear of the car is at its traction limits. On a car with understeer, you would ideally never have to countersteer unless you provide inputs that put the car into an oversteer state (power-oversteer or scandinavian flick). Some cars that exhibit understeer can be countered by applying throttle proportionate to the remaining tractive capacity of the rear wheels. This would be the problem of driving the limit, as you will also demand more of the front tires at the same time. In designing a vehicle, the front and rear tires should be equally taxed with traction requirements, though things such as instantaneous weight transfer, fluid shifting, and driving forces can make this quite difficult. You should drive in a manner that taxes all tires with the maximum amount of tractive capability whether it be from lateral acceleration or applying driving force.

I would say an understanding of the car's physical limits and dynamic behavior can tell you whether the car is at it's limits or not. You can always let a known better driver take your car out for a few laps as well and datalog them. That is typically what I do. Sometimes, you can even be suprised by novice drivers who take a fresh approach to either the track or your car and can prove to be faster in a couple of areas.

This is also why it is important to do skidpad and braking tests while datalogging so you know what the capability of your car is and compare that to what youir car is doing on track. Driving a car as fast as possible is all about maintaining the highest level of acceleration in the appropriate direction.

 

Simply put, smooth is faster at the limit than constantly correcting yourself over the limit.

 

If you search on youtube for a video that has logs of Schumaker's driving, it specifically annotates how he is constantly employing both steering angle correction and throttle modulation.

Although I question the legitimacy of any of Schumaker's driving logs being released to the public, I would not argue them based on the videos of his driving that I have watched.